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June At this point, I am about 3/4 of the way through the first piece, "Better Living Through Criticism" by A. O. Scott. Right off the bat, I loved the excerpt that he chose to put in the beginning from Oscar Wildes "The Critic as Artist". It did a good job of prefacing the struggles of being a creative that Scott would go on to talk about and describe. Within the first chapter (technically the second) Scott brought up the contrast between what we think we like, and what we actually do. It is kind of a nature vs. nurture type of question, “Do you like what you like because of who you are? Or is it the sum of your likes and dislikes that makes you who you are?”. It is a hard reality to think about, especially for me because I tend to think of myself as a pretty independently thinking person, that all our interests or dislikes could just be a reflection of the people around us. Those questions on page 45 really made me think about the things that I have found on my own, and what are probably just from my friends and people around me. In my commonplace book I immediately knew I wanted to create a list of 1. Things I like because of ME 2. Things I like because of others 3. Things I dislike because of ME and 4. Things I dislike because of others. Those categories really made me think hard, especially the parts about things I don’t like. It made me realize that a lot of things that I say I don’t really like are just going off of things I’ve heard and not really based on opinions that I’ve formulated myself. But, it did feel reassuring in some ways to list off all the things I love, because it made me think about how much I truly do organically love most of those things. When listing off things that I knew I really like just from me, I asked myself, “Would I listen to this, eat this, wear this, etc if no one was watching and no one would ever find out?”. I realized that some of the things that I associate with myself and being key parts of what I like might just be a little performative. Like a lot of the movies that I say are my favorites, I probably wouldn’t just sit down by myself one day and watch just because I was bored. But for music and clothes I actually felt pretty secure in my personal tastes! Some of my top favorites were the Trolls movie, chacos, grey thermal henley shirts, and the band Caamp. The top things that I confidently don’t like are rock climbing, pimple popping videos, bananas, wayfarer sunglasses, and chemistry class. I’m guessing in the class that the stuff we talk about will probably try to tell me that the only reason I like the things I like is purely for performative reasons, but I wholeheartedly do not believe that.
JulyNo Archives By now, I have finished our section from "Better Living Through Criticism" by A. O. Scott (and "A More Beautiful Question but I'll talk about that in August"), and I finished liking it much more than I did when it started. The key points that I drew from this were 1. Critics may struggle unknowingly to critique categories of things that they feel neutral towards or have no passion for ex. Theater, rock music, makeup, etc. 2. Things made popular by teen culture are often overlooked because of their key demographic and how we interact with it ex. 2010’s pop music, the Kardashians, social media influencers, YouTubers content, etc. 3. Our opinions are largely shaped by public opinion (duh). I would love to know how the author views today's teenagers; if he sees them as stupid and aimless as so many educated, opinionated adults do nowadays. He would probably say phones and social media are taking over and none of us interact anymore, not thinking about how we practically have the world and everyone in it to connect and share ideas with. Yet, he probably has so much to say about Duchamp's “Fountain”. I have actually gone into lots of study and thought about this specific piece because I chose it for a project in my sculpture class sophomore year. I personally thought it was objectively interesting, but honestly I think the hype behind it is a lot of pseudo intellectual bull. We had a lot of discussions in our class about what should be considered art and who should be considered an artist. There was a person, I can’t recall his name, but he thinks up and sketches these ideas for these huge metal blocks that basically just stand there. I guess I can understand how it could be art but I do not think he is an artist, or at least not a sculptor. At best, he is an architect, and most architects put lots more time, creativity, and precision into their work. What made me start to hypothesize more about how A. O. Scott would look at these things were only introduced later in the passages. The parts that persuaded me the most were the excerpts of dialogue interjected within his writing. It sounded like he was having a conversation/interview type with a much younger person. While A. O. Scott brings it up in the final dialogue, I don’t think he acknowledges that he probably is a part of the problem as well. On page 257 he says “Whole art forms are routinely condemned this way, usually those favored by the young or by other socially marginal groups- the poor, racial and sexual minorities, and so forth” and goes on to give examples. He acknowledges it, but doesn’t try to provide a solution or give much more commentary on it besides “yeah basically this happens, yup”. This was the only time when I really felt like what he was saying was being said in an understandable and relatable way. So much of the text was so hard to comprehend because of the absurdity of the language, it really felt like he was trying to impress and drown the reader with ethos appeals.
August I just finished the “Renaissance Self-Fashioning ” pieces, as well as “A More Beautiful Question”, which is what I’ll mainly be talking about. I thought this text was especially interesting because it brought up so many good questions that I think the staff and students at Galloway discuss a lot. The first statement I noticed, which was later brought up and answered was on page 43, “That academic rigor comes soon enough, as students begin grade school- which is when questioning by kids really starts to disappear”. I was a little bit off put and frustrated by the statement, and the immediate information following it, because it seemed to be blaming it on the student and not the system. In my notes I wrote that we stop to question because we get ridiculed for questioning what we’re told. But, this was later brought up and answered in a more reasonable way on page 48 and a quote that stuck out to me was “students who inquire about ‘the way things are’ could be seen as insubordinate”. The next question which I loved was on page 46 “Do kids stop questioning because they’ve lost interest in school, or do they lose interest in school because their natural curiosity is somehow tampered down?”. This question really made me think and consider the two options. I think most of the time it leans towards the first option given. So many people my age exhibit interest in lots of other different things, and I do not think it is unreasonable for us to not be dripping with interest at pre-calculus or learning about triangle trade. Granted, some kids really do have a natural interest and knack for these subjects, but a lot of us just do not. And, having it shoved down our throats for eight hours a day, going home and working on it independently for another two hours, and then being tested on it would naturally make us a little less keen on it. Meier brought up a great solution to this, which I think a lot of schools have a hard time wrapping their heads around. It was on page 53, “when you give kids more freedom to pursue what they’re interested in, they become easier to control. The much harder thing is forcing them to sit still for five hours and pay attention to information they just don’t care about”. I don’t know why statements like that are so groundbreaking to educators, to me it makes perfect sense. I know Galloway thinks it is unlike any other school ever, and in some ways it really is amazing, but there are some things that I think do not really make sense. Like, they say we do not really have grade and that we go on a different system but that is totally not true. Calling it a different letter doesn’t make a 95 any different than an A or an E, same with G’s, S’, and M’s. They may stand for something, but it really just means the same thing in the grade book. I don’t really understand it, but that’s ok.
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